Monthly Archives: February 2017

Last week, I introduced what I’m calling the Golden Age of Board Games. As I explained in that post, there are many more and a wider variety of board games coming out every recent year than the world has ever seen. In a century that seems to bring more bad news than good, this is a bright spot many of us can cling to.

Yet, with such a new and bountiful world to explore and play in, we’d be remiss if we jumped right in without giving this fairly new activity more thought. As a Christian, I have thought a lot about how the board games I play — and the way I play them — affects me, my relationships with others, including God.

Around three years ago, I wrote one of my most read answers on Quora to the question, “What are some of the best strategy games out there?” A few weeks later, Helena Zhang, a friend of mine from Caltech and fellow officer in our MIT grad dorm, invited me to join a board game group she had started with some labmates. Our group came to be known as “Fun and Games” and started spreading through our social circles, and in particular to the Singaporean community at MIT.

That fall, a new Singaporean grad student started coming to our group regularly. I had met her previously through the Graduate Christian Fellowship and we played on the same team together (playing 7 Wonders) her first visit to our group. Little did I know at the time, those would be the first couple steps on a journey that would lead to us getting married last June, with the Fun and Games group helping to make most of our awesome board game-themed centerpieces: